Current Through the Ages
by Jade Celandine
Summary: Being a private account of the meanderings of a mermaid through all the Ages of Middle Earth, as witnessed by a god, an elf, a wizard, and even a dwarf! Not to mention, naturally, the thoughts of said traveller. SI/OC


**A.N: Hello everyone, Jade Celandine here. I am writing this one just to get the plot bunny out of my head. Like most other stories I have in an army of filing cabinets and whatever I've put up online, updates (if any; I still haven't decided if this is a one-shot or something to be extended for chapters) will be sporadic. Hope you like the oftentimes random extensions of my imagination...**

 **Note: If you think my character's sense of time is iffy, that's because it is. The OC was born and grew up in a place where there are no visual indicators of yearly seasons, just vague impressions of day and night from deep beneath the ocean. Her personal sense of time passage is reminiscent of a stereotypical god or some other divine/semi-holy figure: she lives so long that she cares nothing for such small increments of time such as weeks or months. If she ever tries to guesstimate her age, take the numbers with a pound and a half of salt.**

 **Plus, some of this might not necessarily mesh with canon and origin tales from any of the races, but accept them as my headcanon and move on. I have no time for flames on the subject.**

 **In addition, you are free to correct me if some of the history or fun-facts are iffy with you. I know how fanatics can be; just don't flame or be too mean about it.**

 **Jade Celandine, out!**

* * *

 **Mermaids Really _Do_ Exist!**

Waking up a mermaid was probably not part of the plan. _Probably._

She couldn't exactly remember what plan she was going against, but she knew there had been one at some point, it was just so hard to think through thoughts of _sleeptiredtoobadsosleepy..._

When she woke up again the next time she was a bit more lucid. Just a bit.

It was also about the time that she recognized the various slippery limbs around her to be her new parents' arms wrapping around a baby humanoid with a fish tail. Most of her early years (time runs weird in a water world where light and dark barely make a difference in the right depth) were spent learning: about her parents, the dark-light world full of warm bodies and whale song, and the new _lovely_ language her mother and father cooed at her every time she turned her eyes to their slightly blurry faces.

And it did sound lovely. French and Italian had nothing on Elven languages, which would be later proven to exist much to Baby Mermaid's delight, and said languages had nothing on the spoken words of the sea. If elven had different words for all the nuances of nature and emotion, her people seemed to have just as many to describe currents running just beneath the surface.

It was like the Inuit and all their different kinds of words for snow: there was a word for the migration-current, stay- and not-stay-current, play-currents that kept babies like her happy while her parents went to work for a bit, etc. etc. Of course, they spent most of the time teaching her the currents she _shouldn't_ touch, but those were parents for you.

None of the other mermaids seemed to care that she was able to properly comprehend everything that was said the first time around; it was as if they expected her to be able to understand so fast already. She was the only baby in the group too, so it wasn't as if she could properly gauge her progress with that of her 'peers'. Seeing as everything seemed fine and dandy though...

So she learned, first her name (something like Dances-Under-Dark-Chasm-Currents, but she settled for something resembling Kilauea), then branching out to important life skills like how to swim and how to sing to the whale pod her clan tended to direct them. Soon enough, she had experienced growth and with it, the dreaded puberty into adulthood a second time, distinguishing herself through her whalesongs and the flash of deep sea-blue scales against the usual navy and quicksilver of the deepwater mers.

The constant rotation of migration patterns through tropical and arctic waters with the whales allowed her to meet other tribes, which might as well be a whole other species of mer seeing as the only thing they had in common was the humanoid-with-a-fishy-butt thing.

The tropical mermaid tribes, with its clans kept isolated by the coral reefs they lived around, were the most like sedentary farmers that Kilauea could recognize. Like many of the fish that lived there, these mermaids had colourful tails with diaphanous silky fins that really didn't do anything for speed or manoeuvrability. They were primarily concerned with their standards of beauty in face, form and ability, and only thought a bit better of their nomadic cousins when they heard the midnight songs encouraging whales to give birth in their own language. A few curious individuals made a pass at some of the more 'pleasing' members of her clan, but no self-respecting whalesinger could stomach the thought of even considering a sedentary lifestyle.

They were vastly different from what Kilauea's tribe called themselves, the mermaid clans who shepherded whale pods all over the ocean. Hers was the only one that she knew of that navigated the open waters away from land as a matter of course, and clans were only differentiated by the pod's migration route; rarely was it by species. There was actually an infamous family group swimming around that followed dolphins, but most stuck to larger, gentler ocean mammals that were easier to keep up with.

It still required for their herders to be speed demons to actually _lead_ while possessing enough endurance and stamina to be able to do it for a sustained amount of time. So her tribesmen tended to be composed of lithe, almost lanky individuals with primarily dark scales to blend in with the deep waters and eyes with extraordinarily large pupils to be able to see with as little light as possible. With their emphasis on vocal language, it was inevitable that someone should figure out how to use echolocation like the whales, so evolution had started shrinking their originally expansive pupils to compensate.

The final tribe, though the term could be used loosely, were the mermaids that never roamed past the continental shelf, the clans that probably sparked myths about the Lorelei and Greek water nymphs in Kilauea's old world. No one clan could be reliably pinned down in terms of occupation at once, although the ones whose top halves looked more human made rather disturbing connections in the reincarnate's brain. Like her own, their tail colours were more subdued and better suited to blending in with the ocean floor than any sort of physical aesthetic, but still retaining that diaphanous quality to better tempt or distract prey. Most of those clans she had met were hunter-gatherers, trading much-needed lightweight tools and sheer cloth for baby-swaddles in return for supposed luxuries like whale-bone, whale-fat, and other surpluses her clan could spare. She thought that their cuisine – an odd mix of limited cooking and lots of spice (wherever they got them) – was actually quite good.

The courtship rituals, whenever she could observe them for herself, were surprisingly universal all around. True to the laws of nature, most of the male's antics were to attract the female's attention and have himself be considered as a possible suitor. When he was acknowledged, then and only then would he be allowed to get to wooing the female in question. Everything was left to the woman's discretion.

As a young mermaid just reaching sexual maturity, Kilauea was not likely to be considered by any but the most desperate or foreign males who could not afford to be seen by clansmen and settled to be discreet. In addition, her standards were admittedly high but nonetheless realistic, and she was very much unwilling to consider finding an appropriate male until she'd had maybe one or two adventures first. Her clan called her confessed urges 'white shark'.

So when she was ready, her body looking like it was around the early twenties mark, she took her streamlined pouch of personal belongings and simply swam away from the pod. One of the whale calves, still unnamed, sent a whine of confusion in her direction but obeyed its mother and the keepers calling to it. Kilauea did not look back.

* * *

~0

* * *

And for decades, that was what she did. Wandering first to the enclaves that she knew, then drifting to less and less familiar waters, the mermaid rarely returned to the same place twice in less than five years. She lingered, she dawdled for a bit, but when she left she almost never came back. With her perfect memory Kilauea mapped every inch of the ocean currents she had never seen before, explored tributaries through swamps and river systems and seeing familiar sights through different eyes. Her previously weak and largely unneeded lungs got practice with brief forays out of the water; the feeling of _breathing_ the oxygen straight from the air was not as natural as she remembered.

Seeing people occasionally was also a strange experience for the former human. She knew intimately how walking on two legs felt like, but the part of her body that only knew the smooth rhythmic motions of a single tail thought that these fin-less creatures were ungainly and incredibly confusing.

Really, her human and mer bodies didn't even look like one could have been the other at some point. Her previous body was petite, dark, and stocky, built for hard work on a farm or at least in a workshop from a long time ago, with small almond-shaped brown eyes. This body was long and lean, with the upper half built like a runner and skin in different shades of mottled grey and blue and cream on her belly to between her breasts, just touching her collarbone. Small scales on ridges striated her arms and torso, solving any manner of hydrodynamic problems without compromising her biological arrangement.

She had managed to confirm that yes, elves existed (she did an internal fist pump and was mentally useless to herself for the rest of the day) during one or two of these sojourns to the edge of the riverbank, but they seemed a little less savvy with the natural connections schtick they had always been so famous for. Perhaps she was living in their version of early history. That was good; it meant that she might be able to live through some legendary journey or other by an elven hero. And elven heroes were practically deified.

Kilauea also entertained herself by practising her sea-songs on the land animals around whichever isolated river bend she found herself in, fascinated by how the integral magics affected them. One of the coastal communities had taught her a spell meant to entrance any living creature above the water, and it was the first time that the mermaid was singing it. The syllables were shorter and stopped more abruptly, a combination of singing more with one's lungs as well as using bs and ks more often. Singing underwater only allowed for more fluid consonants and a lot of vocalizations over actual words.

It was interesting to watch how her song affected the local wildlife. Birds seemed mostly unaffected beyond a compulsion to stay and listen, if high on the branches so she couldn't reach them even if she made an effort. Little creatures like rabbits and squirrels actually parked themselves at the very edge of the shoreline, seemingly without any knowledge of what they were previously doing. The only big predator she could attract, a mid-sized black bear, hovered behind the trees, obviously drawn but still possessing some self-preservation instinct and refusing to go in further. Kilauea was unsure of her range however, but she supposed she'd figure it out with further practice. Perhaps her next 'performance' could draw a wolf in easier than a bear next time...

Her senses prickled, and she made to dive for the riverbed when an elf landed on a branch above her. Thankfully the water was fairly deep despite its freshness and covered her escape. The most said landlubber might have seen was a dark indistinct shape that lived or swam deep underwater.

* * *

~0

* * *

As a sapient creature so connected to her environment that their sensitivity was easily comparable to the land-elves, Kilauea was, perhaps, more beholden to her instincts than any landlubber would find particularly healthy. However, a bonus for being so affected was the near-exclusive virtue of being able to direct those instinctual reactions, something that she likened to the Krogan Bloodrage that was capable of being controlled at the hands of an appropriate Battlemaster.

For whatever reason, however, something about this landmass with elves on it living out pre-history seemed to radiate a soothing hum of calm and relaxation. It felt like what the coast of the Garden of Eden might have been like if God turned it into an island. It was nice to just sometimes drift, her mind and senses ranging far away from her form and admiring the world around her.

The sea-guardian of the place was old and almost ridiculously powerful; Kilauea knew that his influence on the coast of elf-land had insured that storms never flooded the land or caused loss of life, which was kind of scary. How many mermaids could say that they had met such a personage as one who could become a sea-god? She had only ever heard of them before.

But that was a process that took millenia, even though the Power was already three-quarters of the way through, so if she remained careful and didn't stir up trouble, she was golden.

Her continued goodwill was supported with offerings of small fish and other things that took effort, but no undue difficulty to acquire, lest it be mistaken that she was seeking protection or – Poseidon forbid – patronage. Patronage meant that she would receive a significant boost in power compared to the reserves she had been steadily and naturally building up with age, but in exchange for doting service and essentially giving up her white-shark lifestyle.

No, thank you.

By this point, he condescended to mark her comings and goings and to even ensure that she drifted on safe currents. That was especially helpful during her out-of-body excursions with the island's soothing aura, as some of the creatures out on the open ocean were _really_ too opportunistic to be comfortable around. She should know, what she thought was a harmless school of sardines almost took a considerable bite out of her some five years ago.

* * *

~0

* * *

Her singing abilities had improved well enough to ensnare a wolf, it seems – as well as a whole herd of deer. Looking at her entranced audience, Kilauea gave herself a mental pat on the back.

She was only recently drawn away from elf-land, driven on by the itch in her tail and the eventual boredom, but at least the mermaid could see her progress on this pet project of hers going swimmingly. Kilauea also made the effort to check on any riverside settlements that were near enough to spy on, and those that weren't were becoming cities and putting up buildings she could see from her vantage point.

Like the white city that looks like what Minas Tirith might have looked like under construction in the... First Age? While her Tolkien geology and geography were excellent, history wasn't something she had ever bothered to try keeping straight. But if she was right, and this was going to be the White City in the books and movies, then this piece of land was Arda.

She was in the Lord of the Rings universe! Yessssss!

But wait, if this was the First Age on Arda, then what was that soothing island she called elf-land? That bit with the scary guardian in its waters? It must be Valinor, the mermaid concluded, where the Valar and Maiar lived and also served as the general continent of the afterlife for all life-forms above the water. That meant that once she and her kin died, they would have a place in the coastlines on Valinor until their version of Ragnarok came up, right? Or were the Valar simply unaware of them, as Kilauea simply refused to believe that the sea-guardian was Ulmo.

She remembered the teaching legends. He was neither powerful nor old enough. Perhaps a creation of Eru or of said Vala, but not Ulmo himself.

Besides, if nobody knew about her species – incredibly likely even for the siren tribes on the continental shelf given how the LoTR universe was like in terms of tech and social structure – would they still be considered a creature of the Valar? Maybe.

Disregarding existential questions for now, the mermaid tested her control by holding out a hand to a small bird, nestled with its fellows on a shrub overhanging the stream. Twittering adorably, it hopped on her long, spindly fingers, easy as you please. A couple of its fellows and even a squirrel huddled close without crowding each other, bringing a nut possibly intended for the autumn preparations in the case of the latter.

There was a fawn behind them safely out of reach, its mother even further behind the brush line watching carefully. A couple of badgers hovered under a thorny bush with a porcupine, and a woodpecker on a tree just above her kept pausing in its work to eye the fish-like creature below it. A fox and a half-dozen ravens were around the same tree, though the nesting robins and a trio of chipmunks didn't seem to notice either of them. The robins and raven were even on the same branch!

She still hadn't been able to ensnare a bigger predator, though she wished she could swim far enough north that she might meet a wolverine.


End file.
